Easter Every Sunday
“Next Sunday,” announced Pastor Peterson, “will be a special Easter service. My sermon subject will be, ‘The Power of His Resurrection.’ ”
There was nothing unusual about the announcement except that the pastor made it from the pulpit on Easter Sunday morning. There were some knowing looks. The pastor has been known to use the wrong church bulletin from the collection he keeps in his pockets, tucked in hymnals, and scattered about in the pulpit.
Two ushers brought notes to the pulpit, but after the anthem the pastor repeated the same announcement.
I was able to clarify the matter at the end of the service, while waiting for the crowds to perform the annual Easter ritual of shaking hands with the pastor. George Bridgewell informed me that Mr. Peterson’s idea of repeating Easter was not a gimmick to keep up the attendance. It was his way of underscoring the fact that the Church celebrates the Resurrection every Lord’s Day and not only once a year.
Mrs. Bridgewell was surprised that I hadn’t heard of the pastor’s plan. “He wanted Easter anthems from the choir and Easter lilies from the flower committee for five more Sundays. Did you ever hear of anything so absurd? I suppose he expects new millinery and ensembles every Sunday, too!”
“In that at least you could oblige him, my dear,” said George.
It was the least I could do to call on the pastor in his study. “This is worse than your Christmas-in-July program,” I told him. “You just have to conform on some things.”
“I wasn’t serious about the Easter flowers,” he said, “but I certainly am about Easter preaching. Preachers who celebrate the Resurrection once a year are no better than their annual Easter parishioners. And as for conforming—can you imagine preaching the Resurrection to conform to a custom? The one power that smashes all conformity to the patterns of this age with the transformity of life from heaven?”
Sermons appear elsewhere in this magazine; I won’t report the pastor further. In brief, he is a dogmatic nonconformist; I think we’ll be celebrating Easter for a long time.
EUTYCHUS
Biased Or Balanced
You are involved in at least two non sequiturs in your biased review of A Christian’s Handbook on Communism (March 16 issue). In the first you use Soviet statements to prove that socialism and communism are equivalent. They also “prove,” however, that capitalism and imperialism are the same. Lenin regarded Marxist socialism as a preparation for the final classless utopia of pure communism. Both Marx and Lenin reserved their most bitter abuse for Fabian (non-revolutionary) socialism.
Your second non sequitur makes compulsory unionism a denial of the “opportunity for all men to work.” Compulsory unionism merely denies the benefits of collective bargaining to those unwilling to share the costs.…
JOHN GOODWIN
New York, N.Y.
The evaluation of the Christian answer asks far too much from the Handbook. It could not be, nor does it propose to be, a handbook of systematic theology. Many of the objections here seem to stem from a fundamental equation of Christianity and American McKinley-type capitalism.
I have read the Handbook. I think it is an excellent study within the limits of its size.…
JOHN A. LAPP
Associate Professor of History
Eastern Mennonite College
Harrisonburg, Va.
I consider your review a well-balanced presentation of gaps and weaknesses in the Division of World Missions’ pamphlet.
I had expected, however, that both the pamphlet and your extended review would refer to tragic shortcomings in the Christian faith as exhibited in the pre-Communist Orthodox Church of Russia. Here is a people who lacked preparation either for democracy or for Christian faith as Protestants understand them.
What the state’s control of religion can mean, in terms of distortion of truth, corruption, and exploitation of superstition, was dismally demonstrated in Czarist Russia. Somehow we should keep this evidence alive for American youth.…
There are … parallels to this condition and its dangers in Latin America, faced with unrelenting thrusts from Communism.
BERT H. DAVIS
Utica, N.Y.
Protestants Sans Protest
Dr. Sasse speaks with authority in his article on the authority of Scripture (Mar. 16 issue) because the Bible is that to him. I agree with his strong emphasis on Scripture being God’s Word. I also agree with him on Protestantism’s weak witness [to this emphasis]. Otherwise, Protestantism would have protested more vehemently against Rome’s dogma of the Assumption.…
D. E. CORDES
Immanuel Lutheran Church
Rosebud, Mo.
Testimonies like that of Herman Sasse are a real contribution to true Christian ecumenism and unity on the basis of sound Bible doctrine.…
JULIUS E. DAHMS
Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church
Lewisville, Minn.
Pre-Golgotha Accent
Dr. Morris (“God’s Way Is Grace,” Mar. 16 issue) says, “The central message of Christianity is the message of the Cross, the Cross where man’s salvation was wrought out by the sheer grace of God.” I doubt if this is the central message of Christianity—it may be the central message of Pauline Christianity; … I personally believe that the real message of Christianity is Christ—his life, his love, his way, his eternal truth.…
WILLIAM M. WILDER
First Methodist Church
Heber Springs, Ark.
Where Men Still Sin
With regard to Mr. Paul Douglas’ article, “Which Way is Up?” (Mar. 2 issue) … he should pay heed to the teaching of Ephesians 4:11, 12 that we are called to specific and various jobs in the Church. And, due to the modern-day complexity of administrative tasks, I can readily determine why there should be a “moving-up” process and training period for these positions. Also, I would think that Mr. Douglas would prefer to have men in administration who have tasted of the blessings and trials of the local parish. Mr. Douglas might have done us more service if, instead, he had analyzed whether or not our administrators were good ministers.…
Since Mr. Douglas doesn’t like his church’s polity and the teaching of Ephesians 4:11, 12, he has, then, only one alternative: to find his little utopia where all systems run smoothly and where all men of the Gospel do no wrong. Personally, I like life the way it is: where men still sin and where the Gospel still has relevance.…
DUANE B. MCCARDLE
Chicago, Ill.
Fritz Rienecker’S Work
In your March 16 issue, you mislocate Fritz Rienecker at St. Chrischona (which is in Basel, Switzerland). Fritz Rienecker left St. Chrischona about five years ago to become president of the “Altpietistische Gemeinschaft” (of Württemberg) in Stuttgart.
G. A. MUELLER
Crane School
Tufts University
Medford, Mass.
No Duty, But A Privilege
The pastors in this land, many of whom know English, are in great need of books about the Bible. If you have any Bible commentaries, dictionaries, devotional books, books on sects and heresies, Bible geographies, or any other useful books … we certainly could use them over here. Send [them] book post and there will be no duty.…
RAYMOND BUKER, JR.
Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission
Society
Lahori Mohala
Larkana, West Pakistan
Science And Causality
According to Clark (“Bultmann’s Three-Storied Universe,” Mar. 2 issue), indeterminacy, quantum mechanics, Heisenberg, wave and corpuscular light theory, et al., have conspired to leave science in such a state of confusion that its criticism of theology is, I suppose, no longer germane if it ever was. This conclusion is what I question.
Science has certainly not “dropped the concept of causality,” … it has merely dropped segments of the Aristotelian conception of causality. Thus Bultmann’s application of the “causal nexus” can be considered legitimate if used with proper care.… On the whole such cause-effect terminology is applied most significantly at the qualitative macro-level, hence it is essential to the language of common sense. Its use in the language of gross-behavior is definitely legitimate. It is only when scientific language reaches an extremely “sensitive” level of description, e.g., metrical conception, that such usage proves inadequate. Hence, I should maintain that indeterminacy threatens classical causality only at the extreme limits of measurement.…
Thus the principle of classical causality still has something to say to us when we attempt to understand gross-behavior. And historical analysis is just such an example of gross-behavior. Accordingly, any interpretation of causality as it is used in the New Testament always implies the “casual nexus” of which Bultmann speaks.
Surely Professor Clark does not think that the New Testament account contains certain subtle principles of physics which its writers understood but which they chose to withhold. Is it not rather the case that the biblical account must be understood in terms of the “causal nexus,” because this is the way it was written?
DONALD R. BURRILL
Prof. of Philosophy
Northland College
Ashland, Wisc.
Gordon Clark’s study of Bultmann … was the most understandable treatment of the subject I have ever seen. Let’s have more of this crystal-clear discussion of basic theological issues and less hiding of the truth behind a smoke screen of technical jargon suited only to the classroom and academic conclave.
RALPH EARLE
Department of New Testament
Nazarene Theological Seminary
Kansas City, Mo.
Professor Clark’s article … is clear, concise, and directed squarely at the issues concerned. There is, however, one statement that I believe must be either a slip of the erudite Professor’s pen or a misprint. I refer to the sentence in the paragraph regarding Bultmann’s view of science which reads: “But science dropped the concept of causality more than a hundred years ago; and in the twentieth century Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle seriously called in question even the idea of mechanism” (italics mine).
The order of the words I have italicized …, I am sure, should be revised. In support of my contention I quote two statements from the first book on modern science that comes readily to hand, Lincoln Barnett’s The Universe and Dr. Einstein (Mentor Books, 1952): “Before the turn of the past century … Newton’s machine-like universe began to topple,” and “Quantum physics thus demolishes … causality” (pp. 18 and 37). In other words, it is the idea of mechanism that was rejected over a hundred years ago, causality that is rendered questionable by the Heisenberg principle. These statements from Barnett could be duplicated from almost any book on modern science.…
VIVIAN DOW
Professor of Philosophy
Boston Conservatory of Music
Boston, Mass.
Vivacious Miss Dow, who so admirably stood up in a philosophic association and very cleverly told off those who were impugning Christianity, proposes to date the death of causality in 1930 and the death of mechanism in 1860. But her quotation from Barnett does not quite imply these dates.
First of all, she and I may not have the same idea of causality. It is a highly ambiguous term. I take causality to be a necessary connection between one particular event and a second. The first is said to make the second occur. Mechanism, on the other hand, is the regularity of mathematical law. Sometimes confusion arises. Even Max Planck (The Concept of Causality, p. 121), when he makes accurate prediction, or mechanism, an infallible criterion of a causal relationship, but refuses to make them synonymous, fails to distinguish the latter from the former.
Now, Berkeley and Hume argued against necessary connection. Kant tried to reinstate it, but he failed to carry the whole nineteenth century with him. Ernst Mach (The Science of Mechanics, pp. 482 ff.) seems to discard causality along with Hume. And in any case, Newton and Planck … made no use of it in their scientific formulations. The law of the freely falling body, the planetary laws, and the law of gravitation do not show what makes a body fall; at best they merely describe how a body falls. The scientific law is a statement of regularity. Therefore I think I am amply justified in saying that science dropped the idea of cause more than a hundred years ago, and not just with the introduction of quantum theory.
But mechanism continued. True, it was questioned by Charles Peirce. Nor do I claim that mechanism is dead. My statement was very modest: the indeterminacy principle and the attempt to reduce physical law to statistics seriously called in question the regularity of mathematical law. I cannot agree with Miss Dow that mechanism was abandoned over a hundred years ago. After all, Jacques Loeb published The Mechanistic Conception of Life in 1912. And C. T. Ruddick defended mechanism against Heisenberg in the thirties.
GORDON H. CLARK
Butler University
Indianapolis, Ind.
A Question Of Relevance
Far from being “Years Too Late” (Book Review, Mar. 2 issue) …, Mr. Bird’s book on Seventh-day Adventism is most relevant, and should be carefully considered by those inclined to the view espoused by the reviewer in his earlier writings; that SDA has so far modified its teaching that it may now be welcomed as just one more among the evangelical churches of Christendom. It is just such unrealistic appraisals that make necessary the book.…
CLARENCE W. DUFF
Willow Grove, Pa.
In all fairness to Mr. Bird, why didn’t Mr. Martin at least allude to note 3, page 65, including the statement that “Adventist workers” with whom the author had discussed the matter of the Wilcox statement “have not heard of its having been disqualified as denominational material.…”
MARY LYONS
Hackensack, N. J.
Demythologize The Pulpit!
“Yes, I went to the _____ church.”
“Did you enjoy the sermon?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know what he was talking about.”
“What was the subject?”
“I have no idea.”
Such frequently heard remarks convince me that we are overlooking an important area that needs demythologization today. It is the pulpit, which, in my experience, leaves any number of people bewildered. I always make a point of asking people who have been in other churches their reaction to the services. Time and again I have been told that they had “no idea what the minister was talking about,” or that they felt no different whatsoever “when I came out from what I did when I went in.”
When George Fox was seeking spiritual help, he heard of a priest who was supposed to be an able minister. But on talking with him, he “found him like an empty hollow cask.” Omar Khayyam said:
Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument about it and about; but evermore came out by the same door where in I went.
This is the experience of many people today who find no water for their spiritual thirst in the churches they attend.
Some have conceived the difficulty to lie in the language and thought patterns of the Scriptures, and so plead for their demythologization. Others, however, find the difficulty to lie in the language and thought patterns of the theologians and their disciples in the pulpits.
A real need of our day is for a simplification of the psychological and philosophical thought patterns that obscure the Gospel and make it incomprehensible to the average man.
The scriptural assertions are not nearly so incredible as the “highfalutin verbiage” of the theologians is incomprehensible. Billy Graham says that he preached precisely the same gospel in India as he did everywhere else. The Eastern bent of mind was apparently no barrier to effective communication.
This is not to say that we are to reject all human learning or ignore the vast treasures of human knowledge. But the insights gained from such studies must be translated into biblical thought patterns, and not vice versa. The pulpit must always resist the temptation to rise above the Koine of the multitudes. What does it profit if the services are awesome in their stateliness, the minister is overwhelming in his erudition, and the people are untouched by the Spirit?
“We have no itch to clog religion with new words,” wrote the Baptists of London when they drew up their Second Confession in 1677. We can utilize the insights of the sciences without clogging our Christianity with their vocabularies and thought patterns.
The pulpit must not lose sight of its basic task, which is to inspire and not to impress; to lead those in the pews to be transformed and transformers, not to be “adjusted”; to evangelize and not to socialize. This task obviously cannot be fulfilled when the communication between pulpit and pew is destroyed by ethereal sermonic wanderings.
But the pulpit likewise fails when it falls prey to a second kind if wrongful usage of scientific knowledge; when it becomes a herald of scientific living. This is seen today in the “adjustment” theology which utilizes psychological knowledge to teach people how to solve the practical problems of modern living. The encounter between God and man becomes a servant of human relations. Sermons deal with such practical problems as how to reduce tensions, how to solve problems of living, how to “get the most out of life,” what the church can do for you, etc.
Some moderns are determined to dress up Christ in a grey flannel suit, to make him blend perfectly into the contemporary picture. The attempt is an obvious travesty of the Christ of the Scriptures.
The Gospel today, in some quarters, is so smothered in adjustment opinions that it is scarcely recognizable. It is really a new religion. Some of the familiar words and names are there, but the aims, the methods, and the message have been grounded. They are earthy, man-centered, horizontally oriented. This religion is typified by a sign I saw on a large church in St. Louis: “The church is your first business, because if the church fails, America’s business fails.” It is easy to see that the ultimate in this faith is in reality secular. It is of man, by man, and for man; God is relevant only insofar as he is an aid to man’s progress and well-being. Auguste Comte’s dream of a church in which the priests would be social scientists has finally been realized. The psychology of adjustment and mental health has been enthroned as a modern Protestant Pope.
The psychological “mythology” completely obscures the kernel of biblical truth. Convulsive Christian ethics are wrongly identified with conventional middle-class morality; New Testament aspirations unto godliness are wrongly identified with suburban respectability; the biblical promises of wholeness in Christ are wrongly identified with secular mental hygiene.
The net result is a Gospel badly in need of demythologization, not of its biblical cosmology, but of its psychological incrustations. Once again, this does not mean an outright rejection of the findings of the sciences. Truth is never hazardous or dangerous to the Christian. The sciences have performed a great service to us in giving us insights into the nature of the world that God has created, the means by which God governs the world, and the nature of the crowning glory of God’s creation, man. But it is necessary to exercise discernment, and to use such knowledge with care, since it is always tentative. An appropriate use will mean that the Gospel is neither obscured by technical phraseology nor transformed by a secular orientation, but is clarified and enriched.
ROBERT H. LAUER
Salem Baptist Church
Florissant, Mo.
